Japan, Gender, Media, Culture

Tongue-in-Cheek Tourism: The T-Shirts of Okinawa

I took a brief vacation to Okinawa in late July. Okinawa’s relationship with “mainland” Japan (which is an island itself, so perhaps “main island” is more apt) is, in many respects, like Hawai’i’s relationship with the US: Okinawa and Hawai’i both have their own culture, language and native inhabitants, but they became part of a larger nation through annexation.

Once called the Ryūkyū Kingdom (琉球), Okinawa was a tributary state of China in the 15th century and traded with what are now China, Japan, and a number of South-Eastern Asian countries. The Japanese military annexed the island after the Meiji Restoration (1868), and it became a territory and later a prefecture of Japan. During World War II, the Okinawan islands became some of the bloodiest battlegrounds of the Pacific Theater, with Allied forces fighting the Japanese and the Okinawans caught in the middle. Nearly one quarter of the native civilian population died in the battle of Okinawa. (Some of this war history and relationship with Japan in the 1980s is detailed in Norma Fields’s In the Realm of a Dying Emperor [1991].) After Japan’s defeat, the US took control of the island until 1972, at which time it was returned to Japan, but the disputed Futenma Airbase and the US military presence and other bases remain.

Andaagii and herb tea at Ryukyumura, a model of a traditional Ryukyu village

These varied and often conflicting cultures with which Okinawa interacted are reflected in Okinawan cuisine. Sugarcane and beni-imo (紅芋), purple sweet potatoes, are native to Okinawa. Chanpurū (チャンプルー), Okinawa soba with pork-loin (沖縄そば), Orion beer, and saataa andaagii (サーターアンダーギー), Okinawan “doughnuts,” show signs of Chinese and Japanese influence through the years. Taco-rice is basically a Japanized version of Americanized Mexican food; a taco minus the shell and plus rice. Steakhouses and Starbucks dot the landscape in hopes of luring military personnel uninterested in Japanese food. (Starbucks Japan is about as Japanese as a coffee shop can get, but that’s another story.)

Chanpuru with spam

Many of the Okinawans, used to dealing with the rotation of non-Japanese-speaking military personnel, were shocked that my friend and I spoke Japanese. In my experience, in the country, I have to go on for a bit and use some advanced grammar and vocabulary in Japanese to get people to praise my language skills. In Tokyo, more people are used to seeing foreigners and once I say something in Japanese, the majority of the people will carry on in Japanese. In Okinawa, all I had to say was “よろしくお願いします” (yoroshiku onegaishimasu, used with requests) at a restaurant to send one very kind waitress into compliments on how good my Japanese was. (Others were more wary, unsure if I were a non-Japanese-speaking tourist or military personnel/dependent* and perhaps a bit uneasy with my American-accented standard Japanese.**)

Beni-imo ice cream. Japanese ice cream made with local ingredients is one of my favorite foods.

Because the Okinawa railroad was destroyed during the war and never rebuilt, most people drive, and the traffic and strip-mallish areas reminded me of back home in the States. The sheer number of foreigners was shocking to me, and places like American Village, of course, were surprising. Driving past the Popeye Chicken on base and shopping for Sobe, cheddar cheese, and deodorant at the PX and the commissary might have been the height of my culture-shock there. (Aside from many military personnel not speaking Japanese well or at all, the weak dollar seems to keep many at the stores on base, where you can buy American food and goods with American money.) Most signs were bilingual, and most of the Okinawans I encountered spoke at least good job-related English.

Wearable Political Cartoons

Shooting a plane--with cameras. A riff on the secret "HABU" plane (see below).

One of the most interesting parts of the trip, though, was t-shirt shopping. I don’t usually buy tourist t-shirts because I don’t usually wear t-shirts about and out. When I vacationed in Winter Park, Colorado, there would be shirts for Mary Jane, a popular ski resort, that read “Get high on Mary Jane” and the altitude or similarly punny slogans; simple designs with the name of the town or the resort; and “experience” shirts: “I skied Mt. X” or “I went water-rafting with X Company.” The shirts of Okinawa, however, are quite different.

"Where we going?"

One of the more prominent shirt shops is called Habu Box, after the deadly snake native to Okinawa. Edit: and, a pun–reader Okinawa Fan commented and I confirmed that “The HABU is also the nickname for a (now retired) top-secret aircraft, painted black, that for many years flew out of Kadena Air Force Base.” The shop has locations in Naha City and American Village. Their shirts are good quality, and they have quite the variety of designs. Some designs are of Okinawa culture—a shisa, the “lion-dog” statues; a sanshin, a three-string instrument; or awamori (泡盛), a local alcohol.

Many of the designs at Habu Box and the other stores we wandered into in an attempt to get out of the heat at the Eisa Matsuri were anti-base, but in a subtle, mostly tongue-in-cheek way. A group of soldiers in an air balloon with the caption “Where we going?” Two young Okinawan boys shooting photos of a secret military plane popularly called Habu. A large shisa in the bottom corner of a t-shirt with a tiny jet near the shoulder. A couple of GIs “lock[ing] on!” a couple of skirts. Some are even more subtle—a carton of milk that reads “946 mL” on the front explains on the back that, unlike the rest of Japan, where milk is sold in 1-liter cartons, in Okinawa, milk comes in 946-mL—1 US quart—containers.

"Lock On!"

My favorite was this veritable essay on the Okinawan railway:

The Keibin

Keibin

1914-1945 Okinawan prefectural possession

light railway

Everyone was calling Keibin.

It is a railway completed for the first time in Okinawa.

And at the very end, in small letters: “but it was lost in the war.”***

"Pink Shisa!?"

The third variety of shirts was the type that parodied American and Japanese culture. There was the “Pink Shisa!?”, the Pink Panther of cartoon fame transformed into a long-limbed shisa.

"Goyabusters"

Another featured the ghost of the Ghostbusters logo transformed into a gouyaa ゴーヤー, or bitter melon, a bitter fruit that looks like a cucumber with a skin condition and is native to Okinawa; the logo reads, “Goyabusters.”

C is for Chinsuko, that's good enough for me!

Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster became “Chinsuko Monster,” as chinsuko is an Okinawan cookie.

Kuro-shisa?

As for Japanese culture, two shisas stood in for the cats on the unmistakable and ubiquitous Yamato Delivery (ヤマト運輸), a.k.a. クロネコ (kuroneko, black cat), mascot.

The thing I liked most about Okinawa was this willingness to parody and poke fun at contemporary culture(s). Okinawa’s native population seems to be perpetually coexisting and in conflict with the distinctive cultures it encompasses. In this way, I feel that Okinawa is a contemporaryexample of a middle ground, a meeting place of various cultures at an indistinct border.****

The decision to use English on these shirts reflects the concept of middle ground as well—Japanese culture considers English slogans and lettering on shirts trendy–no matter what the content actually means or, more often than not, fails to mean. In the case of the anti-base shirts, I can’t help but think that the use of English is directed at least a little at the English-speaking American military forces and the greater English-speaking world. These t-shirts are the kind of political commentary in the line of political cartoons (when they were still funny and relevant): drawing a picture may be considered passive-aggressive, but this form of resistance, when done correctly, and remaining on constant display, stays on the minds of the people.

The shirt I took home to the main island depicts a number of shisa gathered around a bottle of awamori, and, on the back, reads in English, “Awamori is a way of life.” Seeing life on this middle ground wasn’t at all what I expected, but allowed me to see and explore a culture that seemed more “tossed salad” than my childhood home had been in the US when the term “melting pot” lost favor in the 1990s. These t-shirts, too, are as Okinawan as awamori and taco rice: a true reflection of the culture and political climate of the day.

Notes

*No one I met asked me if I worked for the military. I think it’s because women do not serve in the Japanese Self Defense ForcesCorrection: women do serve in the Japanese Self Defense Forces; their role has been expanded since 1967 and they serve in 80% of the fields of the SDF. Because there are more men serving the US military compared to women, I imagine I would have been mistaken for a soldier had I been a man. Women represented only 14% of all military on active duty in 2008 (The New York Times). Most of the friendly people to whom I spoke asked if I were an English teacher on the “mainland,” which is an acceptable and common job for an American woman.

**I’m actually starting to pick up a local accent because I find, just as Tony found in the manga version of 「ダーリンは外国人」with Kansai-ben, if you speak a dialect, especially the local one, people will be a lot more likely to believe that you speak Japanese. In my case, people are often nicer to me if I sound like I’m from the area.

***Actually, the Okinawa Monorail was built in 2003, but only operates within the city of Naha.

**** It was a middle ground, of course, since the time when others came to trade and demand tribute, but the “frontiers” of the US and of Japan, namely Hokkaido, of that era and today’s middle grounds operate somewhat differently. For more on the concept of a middle ground in the 17th-19th centuries, see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991) and Brett Walker, Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800, about the “frontier” of Hokkaido and influenced by White’s research on Native Americans.

I’ve never been to Japan but I am interested in eventually going there. I love the T-shirts that you showed too, especially the ‘Goyabusters’ which I think is too funny! The ice cream looks really yummy too, and after staying a while in a certain area you do tend to pick up their accent and way of speaking.

The ice cream was amazing. I’m also lucky to live by a place that makes gelato out of local ingredients, so I’ve gotten to try a lot of interesting flavors.

I think I subconsciously pick it up more in my native tongue than in Japanese–in Japanese, I had to spend some time figuring out how the local dialect sounded different than Standard, and from there I would add it to my speech to try to blend in better. Now I don’t even think about it, but it gets me in trouble when I travel sometimes because it’s not a dialect most people hear, unlike Kansai-ben, which most people are familiar with because of TV. It’s been a linguistically interesting year, to say the least!

Just yesterday I looked up the word “Goy”, not knowing what it meant. (Slang for non Jew) Also, Goya came up in the dictionary:
Goya |ˈgoiə|
(1746–1828), Spanish painter and etcher; full name Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. He is known for his works concerning the French occupation of Spain 1808–14, including The Shootings of May 3rd 1808 (1814) and The Disasters of War (1810–14), depicting the cruelty and horror of war.

Both words/names would seem to have a relevance to Okinawa, giving extra meaning to the T-shirt.

Okinawa seems such an exciting place, full of vibrant contemporary culture – foods, shops, tongue-in-cheek t-shirts – I really want to go again. And there’s so much to see that I couldn’t in that one weekend a few years back – I only went to Naha and Shuri, so I never got to see any of Nago or Ryukyumura (which I didn’t even know existed), let alone the other cities, the gusuku, etc.

Thanks for the link to that t-shirt shop. I don’t imagine they ship to the States, so I guess I’ll just have to keep them in mind and try to remember them for the next time I’m in Japan. But…

I do kind of wonder why it is that Hawaii, with its incredibly strong Okinawan community, doesn’t have branches of these kinds of t-shirt shops, or indeed any Okinawan shops much at all…

Yeah, I knew when I decided to write it you’d be happy! And since we’re real-life friends, I could ship you something if you find something on there you like.

I want to visit the smaller islands, too–I was only on the main island. You would love Ryukyumura, I think. You can dress in fancy Okinawan clothes, and the men’s clothes are so cool! It’s a little touristy, but honestly, it was like all the information there on pre-Meiji Okinawa was in one place, so I was glad to go.

Every time I look at pictures of this place on-line it makes me want to visit. But your post did an even better job of me wanting to get out there!lol….I LOVE local shops with cool and unique stuff, and who in the states would have cool screen print tees as the ones you posted!? LOL….Keep the post coming…where are you going to next?

Okinawa is amazing–I highly recommend it! The beach was lovely, too. I’ve posted a bit about my travels in the Kansai region, Tokyo, and Yamagata–next? Tokyo, Nagoya, and a woefully backlogged one on Fukushima, I hope. Thanks for the comment!

I have heard from several people that have lived in Japan that typically when natives compliment your language skills, they are making fun you. Kinda the way in America we speak to kids when they did something pretty beneign and we congratulate them.

If you are new to Japanese and an acquaintance is trying to be polite, they may say that your Japanese is good as a conversation filler. This is often followed by, “My English is so bad!” (which may or may not be true). It’s part of the culture of elevating the guest and humbling yourself. I have witnessed very little of this with my new-to-Japanese friends this time around, and I’ve actually never had it happen with simple phrases in a restaurant. Most clerks/restaurant staff are used to “obvious foreigners” knowing enough Japanese to order a meal.

After seven years of mostly formal study, I tend to get that compliment for using a difficult word or after several minutes of conversation about a semi-complex topic, never for just saying, “Please.” So that’s my two yen on it, though your mileage may vary.

A couple of clarifications on your observations…
The HABU, as you probably know, is the snake native to Oki that fights the mongoose (bets are made in some venues). The HABU is also the nickname for a (now retired) top-secret aircraft, painted black, that for many years flew out of Kadena AFB (that is the big base where the commissary/exchange and other major Morale and Welfare attractions are located–Funtenma, the USMC smaller airfield/helicopter facility that you mention, is a little fart on the landscape by comparison….the only reason the Japanese complain about Futenma as opposed to Kadena is because they don’t have a hope in hell of getting rid of the much larger Kadena). Anyway, even though the US government never “confirmed nor denied” the presence of this super secret spy plane (it was the successor to the Gary Powers ride and did some heavy lifting around the world for many years before satellites got better), everyone knew it was there. Right at the end of the runway on Kadena, over the fence, somehow, magically, the Okinawans always knew when that darn HABU was going to launch. They would set up bleachers right over the fence, a couple of vendors with food trucks and cold drinks would come along, the bleachers would fill with sightseers with cameras, and they’d shoot the HABU as it flew overhead. You could buy huge full color posters of the HABU in all its afterburner glory in any shop out in town. They also photographed other aircraft (F-4s and their successors, P-3s, A-4, Harriers, CODs, anything that flew in from other facilities escaping a typhoon, etc.). After the Habu retired, the penchant for photographing US aircraft from outside the fence did not wane. Anyway, THAT’s what that tee-shirt is riffing on–it’s not a “peacenikish” thing, necessarily, it’s a local past time.

The shirts are not directed at Americans. They’re just “cool.” They’ve been cool for years, nay, DECADES. They’re making a lot more sense than they used to — thirty years ago, they’d just take a random phrase in English and slap it on a shirt. Now, they’re trying harder to craft a mini-story.

The Okinawans are WELL USED to women in military service. A very large percentage of the military personnel aboard Kadena, from all branches of service, are women. Women are overrepresented in the pay, logistics, and administrative fields, which are abundant on that base. They also serve in security, aircraft maintenance, transportation, weapons departments, and other capacities as well. Just because they don’t wear their uniform while shopping out in town doesn’t make them a “wife.” For all you know, that American guy buying the coffee at the Starbucks could be a dependent of a military woman, whiling away an evening while she’s on duty.

In recent years, the military (particularly all branches save the Army, which is shorthanded due to wars in the Middle East) have used fitness as a force shaping tool. If you’re not very “buff” (and I don’t know you so don’t take this personally) and within military weight standards, you don’t fit the profile for a “military woman.” If your accent sounded mainland, too, and you didn’t speak any Okinawan dialect, they would naturally assume that you weren’t from around there.

In the FOOD department, spam is a staple in Okinawa, rather like it is in Hawaii. There’s nothing like Yakisoba made with spam–an Okinawan delicacy.

Also, women DO serve in the JSDF. They have for YEARS NOW–enlisted and officers. In fact, they’ve done exchange programs with servicemen AND women from other nations. Prior to 1967, women’s presence was limited to a nurse corps, but since then, they’ve been opening up specialities at a rapid clip, and women serve in four out of five operational (and all administrative) specialities available. They are not a large presence, but they are growing steadily as the force is all volunteer, and young men are less and less inclined to join.

Thank you for your comment–I’m not a student of Okinawan culture, so it was great to hear from you.

I edited in your comment about the Habu plane, and I updated a couple other things, too–the info about women in the SDF,

Regarding the military wife thing, I did edit that, but the friend I was staying with is a female officer. Despite being quite buff, she is usually mistaken for a tourist or an English teacher rather than military personnel, and when I asked if I would be mistaken for a soldier, she assured me that they would assume I were a teacher, tourist, or dependent before they assumed I were military because she always was. Nevertheless, I altered the statement.

Anyway, thanks again for such a detailed comment, and thank you for reading!

Also, I forgot to mention that my chanpuruu had spam in it, so I added that to the photo caption. I had never eaten spam before I went to Okinawa. It was good in the chanpuruu!

another interesting take on Okinawa. did you see the post i did this week on my experiences on the island. i wanted to do add a piece about all of the funny japanese to english translations on shirts but i already had too many words. great post.

Great post- really interesting, and sets me off longing for that part of the world all over again. There’s nothing like T shirt shopping in that part of the world- it’s great.

Interesting about the Spam as well. As an English person, Spam is mostly associated in my mind with the Monty Python team singing their song about it in the BBC canteen. When I see it in the supermarket in the UK I always walk past without picking it up. It’s got a negative profile as a product here. But when I lived in Korea I was often given overwhelming quantities of the stuff as gifts. At holiday time, they sell huge gift boxes of Spam- more than you could ever eat. That was totally bizarre to my mind, as in England it’s certainly not a prized product!

It’s quite popular in Hawai’i, too–perhaps because it keeps so long and is easily stored. I’d never eaten it in the US or Japan, but it was pretty good in the chanpuruu. I think I’ll leave it as a “dining out” food only, though.

It’s a postwar legacy that marries well with both the Okinawan and Korean enthusiasm for pork (and, in modern culture, near-pork) products. SPAM didn’t exist in Okinawa until the post-WW2 era, and became popular in Korea during the Korean War. Where the Army went, Spam followed.

In devastated, war-torn regions where food was scarce, and food was provided by the US military to the civilian population to mitigate hunger, a can of Spam could “do” a large family for several days when a few vegetables were added and a bit of rice as well. Since Asian cusine uses meat sparingly anyway, and relies on flavoring to give a dish a bit of zing, it was easy to adapt traditional recipes to a Spam version–cut down on the salty seasonings like soy, owing to the inherent saltiness of the Spam, and pump the recipe up with other tastes and flavors. When julienned or diced, you don’t know what you’re eating–all you know is it tastes pretty good! Also, since most people didn’t have luxuries like refrigerators in the immediate postwar aftermath, Spam, needing none, was a great way to introduce protein into the diet with a twist of a Spam key. When commerce resumed as the economic conditions normalized, Spam was sought out because it was affordable, as well.

Spam was postwar manna, basically, and it quickly became a tradition. It’s not really very good for one in large quantities , but it’s not like it’s eaten by the slab in Okinawa or Korea–it’s more of an accent meat than anything else.

As an unrelated aside, Spam was King of the Road during WW2 in the USA as well, owing to meat rationing. A small amount of spam could be ground and pickles and onion and mayo added to make a convincing “ham salad” for finger sandwiches–and the spam packed a lot of punch, even if the mixture was spread thinly. A hostess with a can of Spam on her shelf never had to feel like she was being inhospitable, rationing be damned!

Sorry–no blog! I really don’t have that much to say on a regular basis, believe it or not! I’m afraid I have been a bit verbose here, but then, I’m an “Okinawa Fan” who remembers my many years there fondly!

I always thought it was very sad that the U.S. handed Okinawa back to Japan without letting the Okinawans vote on it. There was a secret agreement that the U.S. would get to keep bases there indefinitely.

There are a lot of Americans who served on active duty and who, in the postwar (WW2-Vietnam and then some) era, started families in Okinawa and feel the same way.

Years ago, the Americans were actually more popular amongst the local population than the Japanese. An Okinawa Shinbun newspaper poll asked the question: Would you rather have your daughter marry an Okinawan, a Japanese, or an American? The Okinawan came in first, of course, but the American came in a strong second, and the Japanese a distant third. Those were the days, I suppose.

Aside from the No Vote business, the people of Okinawa were forced to wake up one morning and drive on the “wrong” side of the road–as, up until the transfer of sovereignty, Okinawans drove on the right, like Americans. There were quite a few accidents on those coral dusted roads as people adjusted to the change.

Okinawans were looking forward to reversion day, actually, because they thought the bases would leave, they would get their land back, etc. They were hit with double whammy: bases remained and the exchange rate for their dollars when converting to yen was less than previously advertised. Extra trivia, during American occupation, Okinawans were Japanese citizens but required a passport to visit mainland Japan. Yeah, I don’t quite get that one either.

This post was great since I’m interested in learning about Japanese culture. I quite like how you described the “Goyabusters” tee as a “cucumber with a skin condition”, I thought that was hilarious!
Keep up the good work! 🙂

Milk is sold by the liter in mainland Japan?!?! Color me shocked. (half, used to live there) Okinawan t-shirts used to not be very interesting. I’m glad to say we’ve come a long way. Enjoyed the post, must pick up more shirts when visiting relatives.